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Brief Description
The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025. Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly... Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country....
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Description
The sensational new novel from the author of the bestselling thriller, The Creeper, winner of the Ned Kelly Award for Best Crime Fiction 2025.
Deep in the mountains, secrets grow deadly...
Detective Constable Sally White knows how easily hikers can go missing in Victoria's high country. But there's something about the disappearance of Louis Taylor, a young man lost up Mount Viking, that's not sitting right with her.
Louis was an aspiring journalist, researching the illegal tobacco trade—also known as chop chop—that was once so prevalent in the area. And the last person he interviewed before his hike has just met a gruesome end...
But with no other leads, and with the search winding down, Sally is forced to accept the young man died in a tragic accident.
Until she learns of another missing person case that bears striking similarities. Astrid Marlowe, a young lawyer, vanished in the same mountains two years before.
Were Louis and Astrid simply unlucky hikers lost in the treacherous terrain? Or did they both stumble into something—or someone—they shouldn't?
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9781761351112
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 28 July 2026
Country: Australia
Imprint: Penguin Random House Australia
Audience: General / adult
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 1.0mm
Width: 1.0mm
Height: 1.0mm
Weight: 1g
Pages: 352
About the Author
Margaret Hickey is an award-winning author and playwright from North East Victoria. She has a PhD in Creative Writing and is deeply interested in rural lives and communities. She is also the author of Cutters End, Stone Town, Broken Bay, The Creeper and An Ill Wind, and a collection of short stories, Rural Dreams. Cutters End was awarded the BAD Crime Sydney Festival's Danger Prize, and was also shortlisted for the Ned Kelly Award for First Fiction. Margaret won the Ned Kelly Award for Best Fiction in 2025 for The Creeper, which introduced readers to Sally White.
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